It's well known that honeybees communicate through vibrational signals, but why the bees actually make them has been up for debate.

Back in the 1950s, scientists suggested that the vibration signal was used as a request for food, as they observed that the noise was often followed by the bees exchanging meals.

Later, researchers also noticed that the noise was used to inhibit another bee from performing a waggle dance – a form of communication used to tell other bees where to go to forage.

The stopping of this waggle dance suggest that it worked as a 'stop signal'.

But new research suggests that the way the bees were investigated in those past studies was flawed, and the signal is more common than we thought.

"Scientists in the past have explored this signal in artificial circumstances where they ensured that the bees under investigation would be trying to inhibit other bees," said Bencsik.

In the latest research, the team placed accelerometers into the centre of two hives in the UK and France to record bee noises that are inaudible to the human ear.

The vibrations were recorded for a year, and computer software scanned the recordings for the vibration "whooping" noise.

"In our study, we have not manipulated our bees in any way, and this has revealed totally unexpected results, yielding new interpretations but also yet more mystery around this brief honeybee vibrational pulse," said Bencsik.

"We believe that in only a small number of instances is it used as an inhibitory signal and therefore have proposed a new name – the 'whooping' signal."

They found that the accelerometer would pick up six or seven whoops a minute, and from a very small area in the honeycomb.